Cloudburst At Shingle Street:Thomas Dolby
Artist: Thomas Dolby Genre: New Wave Appears On: The Golden Age of Wireless Appears On (Mixes): The Opposite Of Smoke Is Egg Whites, Dub Club: It's Raining Again - Matt Song Notes: The Opposite Of Smoke Is Egg Whites: This is the last track from Thomas Dolby's first album, The Golden Age of Wireless. Thomas Dolby's actually had a lot of great long songs; I knew I wanted to include one of his, and I narrowed it down to either this one, "Budapest By Blimp" or "I Love You Goodbye". Dolby's biggest hit was "She Blinded Me With Science", although he had a few minor hits as well; "Hyperactive!" was one of the sources for "Weird Al" Yankovic's style parody of Dolby, "Slime Creatures From Outer Space" from Dare To Be Stupid. I love Dolby's lyrics; the first verse of "I Love You Goodbye" is "I would never normally go bowling/On a friday morning in New Orleans/But I like to come here to remember/The kind of places you took me/Like the time we stole a Datsun/And drove all night to the everglades/Until we crashed it in a big electric storm/And stood there listening to the bayou rain". My favorite part of this song is the strikingly beautiful bridge. The outro, "When I was young, I was in love/In love with everything/Now there's only you," is great as well, especially the almost sad, wistful way he sings it. Just a really, really great track all around. - Rev. Syung Myung Me Dub Club: It's Raining Again - Matt: This is from The Golden Age of Wireless, Thomas Dolby's first full length album. Oddly, while it's the last track there, it's the first track here! I suppose this is probably a bit more of a spring-type of song, a spring-type of rain, but I like it too much anyway. While reading Brian Eno's diary, he mentioned Shingle Street, which makes me think it might actually be a relatively famous location that I just didn't realize. After doing a little bit of research, I'm not sure if it is—it's just a place in Suffolk, although I did find this, which was pretty interesting about a foiled German invasion plot during the beginning of WWII that happened on Shingle Street. I don't think this has even remotely anything to do with the song, but it's still kind of interesting, I suppose. Looking on Wikipedia, though, doesn't bring up anything on Shingle Street as itself, though, so I guess it's just your standard, everyday street where you can, apparently, find Brian Eno walking occasionally. - Rev. Syung Myung Me I lived in England (East Anglia) from 1963 - 1966 on an RAF Base near Woodbridge and Sutton Hoo (ancient Viking archaeological site). A short bike ride to the coast (North Sea) took us to a pebble-covered beach called "Shingle Street" (shingles being the pebbles on the beach, as I recall). It had been a beach head with abandoned outposts to fend off the Germans in WWII. I always assumed that Thomas Dolby had spent time in this area. It's not well nor widely known. More about it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shingle_Street Category:Songs